Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at Morphy's
taking a look at a Valmet M78 in 7.62mm NATO.
Now this would appear to be the light machine gun
version, or the squad automatic weapon version,
of the Valmet standard AK pattern rifle.
And it sort of is, but it was never actually a military gun.
Well, it sort of was military gun, but this one isn't.
So to start from the beginning. The Finns adopted the AK in the ... early 1960s with the RK62.
The original ones were milled receivers, and they have aperture sights.
And we in the US tend to think of that as ideal,
especially the aperture sights, that's exactly what you would want.
Well, that wasn't quite the unanimous opinion everywhere.
And in the 1970s, late '60s early 1970s, there was some question in Finland
as to was that really a better style of sight?
Or would you be better off with open sights,
notch sights, like the Russians used on all of their AKs?
And this led to the development of the M71
which was a stamped receiver rifle using open sights.
And really it was a departure from the original RK62 in a bunch of ways.
And it never actually got adopted by the Finnish military,
they decided that, no actually, they liked the version they already had.
Now the stamped receiver was interesting.
It was more economical to use, and it would go into Finnish military production,
basically replacing the milled receiver on the same style of gun.
What the M71 did however, was it was used as a commercial export as the M71S.
(Which, by the way, I have a previous video on if you're interested.)
The open notch sight made it look more like a standard Russian pattern AK.
And at this time there were basically no AKs available in the United States
when the M71 started to be imported.
And so that was the one option, and anyone who wanted an AK,
well, they could go get a Finnish M71.
And it looked relatively similar, given the options at the time.
Now shortly after this, 1974,
the Finns put together another prototype military concept, and that is this rifle.
It is a longer, heavier barrelled, basically a squad automatic version, an equivalent of the RPK.
Now in ... what would have been Finnish military service,
this would be chambered for 7.62x39mm because that was their standard cartridge.
Now at this point they already had as a squad automatic weapon the KvKK 62.
Which is (long story), it's an adaptation of a Czech design, the Czech 52/57.
It's a belt-fed 7.62x39.
You might equate it to the RPD, although mechanically it's totally different.
(If you want to know more about it, I also have a video on that one that you can check out.)
But they had that already, and this was going to be the cavalry light machine gun.
And they did some testing, and they ultimately decided not to adopt it.
However, Valmet was selling rifles on the international commercial market as well,
and so they took the concept
and developed it into what was designated the M78 for commercial export.
And they sold them in 7.62x39, although that wasn't a hugely popular calibre,
because it was really hard to find that ammunition here in the West at that time.
We're talking 1980s really.
So they also offered it in 5.56, the standard US calibre, and also in 7.62 NATO.
However, I really want to emphasise the fact that had this been a military service weapon in Finland,
it would have been in 7.62x39. 7.62 NATO was purely for the commercial market.
So, this is what they produced and sold, let's take a closer look at it.
Alright, let's discuss the most important aspect here first,
and that is this little full-auto marking.
All of these Valmets came into the United States as semi-automatic rifles.
However, these predate 1986, and so it was still legal to manufacture
machine guns, full-auto rifles, in the United States.
And so this, and other Valmets as well,
were made into machine guns and legally registered as such.
And so today this remains a fully transferable ... machine gun.
And you know, hey, if you want a squad automatic version of the Cadillac of the AK world,
you really want it full-auto. So that's what this is.
For original markings we have the Valmet logo, "Made in Finland", on the back of the receiver.
And hiding under the carry handle here, we have the serial number and the calibre.
Note the Finnish lion proof mark there.
As an RPK pattern gun this was given a clubfoot style of buttstock.
The idea there is you have your firing hand on the grip,
and your support hand pulls back on the front of the stock, right here.
Sling swivel as well.
All of the M78s have a spring-loaded carry handle.
The gun's a little heavier than a standard rifle,
so that's kind of a typical light machine gun sort of thing.
The rear sight is graduated up to 500 metres,
and it's the open-notch style sight of the Valmet M71.
There are a couple of dots on either side of the rear notch
that were painted with luminous paint
to be used in conjunction with a luminous front sight.
Now that's just a flip-up night sight there, so if you don't want it you can flip it down
and you still have a regular square [post] front sight.
The front sight block and muzzle device here is
basically copied from the earlier patterns of Valmet rifle.
So we have a bayonet lug that will fit their very cool little puukko knife style bayonet,
as well as a windage adjustable front sight and a flash hider.
The bipod is not a copy of the Russian bipod, this is sort of a uniquely Finnish bipod.
There is a ... spring steel cap here that will hold the bipod legs in position when they're folded.
And then for use they flip out to the front.
The selector is totally standard AK.
Semi-auto on the bottom, full-auto in the middle, and safe on the top.
Magazines are unfortunately proprietary to the M78.
By the way, there was also the M76, so an infantry rifle pattern, was also offered in .308.
It does not use the same magazines, which is a little unfortunate.
This is obviously based on an HK pattern magazine.
Magazines for these guns are quite scarce, I believe this one has two with it.
But not many magazines were imported.
Not many of these guns were imported, we're talking a few hundred Valmets total
of all patterns, before the 1989 import ban ended their availability, so.
There have been some efforts to make other types of magazine fit, to varying degrees of success.
But that's going to be one of the issues with this rifle is getting magazines that actually work for it.
And while we're looking here, by the way, there is the machine gun registration marking.
There's really not much to show you inside here, this is just totally standard AK.
I suppose it's not entirely standard: the recoil spring isn't captive.
The bolt and bolt carrier.
This being a Valmet, of course the gas tube is a separate component,
... in this case with the rear sight mounted on it, instead of being on the dust cover.
And there you go, there is it field stripped.
You can take off the handguard there, but no need to go ahead and do that.
It's really interesting just how many varieties Valmet offered on the commercial market.
They have 62s, 76s, 71s, the 82 bullpup, the 78 heavy-barrelled rifle.
They offered ... almost all of them in both 7.62x39 and 5.56.
They offered a bunch of the versions ... in 7.62x51 as well.
They had wood stocks, they had plastic stocks, they had tubular stocks, they had folding tubular stocks.
This huge gamut of options that you could get.
And so if you start looking into Valmet commercial rifles in detail,
it's easy to get lost in the minutia.
But what we have here is one of, I think, the cooler patterns.
... It's a cool hypothetical military rifle, and for anyone who's interested in
NATO calibre AKs and RPKs, it's a fantastic concept piece.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video,
hopefully you learned something new out there today.
Thanks for watching.